Kobo executive Michael Tamblyn provided a look at some of the challenges of taking ebooks global quickly. Among the biggest challenges has been Japan, home of their new parent company Rakuten. “We’ve learned a lot working in Japan,” he said. “They have everything there–it’s just evolved completely differently” than in the rest of the book publishing world. They have no metadata standards, two competing ebook standards, very little simultaneous release in print and digital, file conversion challenges, and very few centralized repositories. In many countries, as Tamblyn underscored, “we see a lot of vertical integration once we get outside of […]
Book Fairs
DBW: Talking Around the Edges of Libraries and eBooks
The dialogue between publishers and libraries over the potential for ebook lending continued at DBW on Wednesday. In the panel Discovery and Libraries in an Age of Few Bookstores, librarians and their allies talked up the library as a place for publishers to make direct connections to readers, and the value of readers’ advisory, the librarian as a human discovery engine. Random House director of account marketing Ruth Liebmann said Random House, the only big six house that provides library ebook lending without limitations, is now telling the audio reps they send to libraries to talk about other formats as […]
DBW: Forecasting the Future
In keeping with what Mike Shatzkin dubbed a “grand tradition,” Digital Book World came to a close Wednesday with its recurring panel of executives talking about the digital present and immediate future. Managing Director Group Sales and Marketing, Print and Digital for Bloomsbury Evan Schnittman, svp Global Professional & Trade at Wiley Mark Allin and vp Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Perseus Clare Peeters spoke about signs of slowing ebook growth, the possible resurgence of print sales, and the most promising opportunities over the next one to three years. On ebook growth in the US, Schnittman said “in the aggregate, […]
Do-It-Yourself-DBW Kit
Whether you were there or not, some of the Digital Book World presentations and data are available online in a variety of forms. It’s very rare for us to use the phrase “must read,” but Nielsen’s white paper on The Link Between Metadata and Sales that accompanies president of Nielsen Book Jonathan Nowell’s Wednesday presentation certainly qualifies. First presented at our Publishers Launch event in Frankfurt and now expanded and revised, it demonstrates with great precision the clear extent to which more quality metadata increases book sales (based on UK data). Fiction shows the greatest improvement when four key “enhanced” […]
Amazon’s Grandinetti Says to Invent the Future
A year ago Amazon vp, Kindle content Russ Grandinetti told the audience at Digital Book World, “however fast you think this change is happening, its probably happening faster than you think.” On Wednesday morning, Grandinetti returned to an even larger DBW audience that has just experienced that year of rapid change (or catching up). “If you’re worried about the shape of the future, the best way to predict it is to invent it.” Grandinetti called on publishers to have “bravery” in these new times that can “feel scary to all of us in some ways” and “envision what you want […]
BN Offers to Share Digital Reading Data and Work With Indies to Preserve Bookstores
Barnes & Noble vp of ebooks Jim Hilt told the Digital Book World audience Tuesday morning some things you aren’t accustomed to hearing from the industry’s largest chain of bookstores. Speaking to “the power of the independent bookstores,” Hilt said “the notion that we are competing with each other is, I believe, untrue.” He added, “as people move on to other forms of content, what we want to do is to be working together to get more books in front on more readers.” Without offering further specifics, Hilt suggested that BN would be willing to work with independents to help […]